After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, March 27, 2014

I went to Thursday Night Gaming again at Paradise Perks.  There was a surge in attendance at this event. There were over 30 people at the event with six game being played at any one time.

I played three games at the event.

The first game I played was Trans America.  Trans America is a game that is deceptively easy to learn but is very difficult to master.  In Trans America the players are required to connect up five different cities in different regions of the United States.  The players start building track from their starting post.  If they connect up to another player’s track, they can build off of that player’s track as well as their own.  In this way players wind up helping each other out while trying to achieve their own goals.

This time the game was over quickly.  In the first round one of the other players was able to complete getting to their cities very quickly.  I was the one who lost the fewest amount of points taking a four point hit.  The other two players took a six and seven point hits.  In the second round I was able to improve my performance and only lost one point.  Unfortunately the player how took the seven point hit in the first round managed to lose another six points in the second round ending the game.  I managed to come in second out of four players only because I was the least sucky not because of some great strategy on my part.

The second game was Bazaar.  In Bazaar the players are gem traders trying to fulfill gem orders from demand cards in competition with the other players.  They do this by using two trading boards that represent the exchange rates for the market.  For example one red gem can be traded for two blue gems.  The players use the exchange to fulfill the demand cards as efficiently as possible to maximize their points.

The game started out very promising.  I was able to claim the first card in the game which was good for me.  During the rest of the game I was able to keep up with the leaders and at some points be ahead of anybody else.  However victory was snatched from my hands when one of the other players that was just a point behind me most of the game was able to grab the last card a turn before I was going to be able to do it and hurtled into first place leaving me in second placed out of five players.

The last game of the evening was a new one for me but it has been out for a while called Seasons.  Seasons is a game where the players are sorcerers that are competing to determine who will be the Archmage of their kingdom.  In order to do this they are trying to create magic items that collect them crystals which are the game’s victory points.   At the start of the game the players are each given nine cards which they will then select one of and pass the reaming card to the player on their left.  The process is repeated until all of the cards from the original hands have been distributed among the players.  The players cards are then divided into three piles of three and will be activated for use during the game with the first three cards being available in the first round and three cards being added to their hand at the beginning of each new year.

At this point the game is ready to be played.  The first player roles the dice that are available in the season of play they are in.  The number of dice is one more than the number of players in the game.  The players then draft one of the dice from those that are available in turn order.  Afterwards the actions from the dice are taken.  These include the gathering of power, transformation of the power into crystals, drawing an additional power card, and increasing the player’s active card limit.  The player can then use the power  they have gathered to play out power cards from their hand up to their limit determined by their power gauge.  The seasons counter then advances and the start player moves on player to the left.  The game end when three years have been played out.

To say I was unfamiliar with the game is an understatement.  When I got the nine cards that I needed to select one from I had no real comprehension of the power of each of the cards.  After some deep deliberation I decided that there was no real way I was going to be able to optimize my hand during the selection phase so I did what any irrational person would and chose the fifth card in the hand and took it.  I did this in my selection of the remaining nine cards as well.

Armed with my hand for the game, I then divided it into the three piles putting what I figured would be cards that would be easy to purchase and would be able to give me extra points or power in the piles I would get earlier in the game and the ones that would generate points for me one time later in the game.  This worked out for me early in the game because I was able to take an early lead but by the middle of the game I fell to the back of the pack however I had been able to complete my cards well before the end of each season so I chose dice that would get me additional cards figuring that playing out those cards were the largest score boosts in the game.  I was able to use these additional cards to increase my score and won the game in the final round with a 20 point lead.

My stats for the game:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Trans America	1	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	2.00
Bazaar	1	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	2.00
Seasons	1	1	-	-	-	-	-			1.00
Totals	3	1	2	-	-	-	-		-	1.67